Iranian officials have warned that posting video footage of women removing their mandatory headscarves in public could lead to up 10 years imprisonment, according to media reports yesterday.

The announcement specifically named the US-based social media platform of Masih Alinejad, which since 2014 has been inviting Iranian women to post pictures of themselves without the hijab.

Ms Alinejad has been accused by the Iranian regime of working as an agent of the US government over the website, known as My Stealthy Freedom.

“As Masih Alinejad has a contract with the Americans, all those women who send the video footages of removing their hijab to her will be sentenced between one to 10 years of jail according to the article 508 of the Islamic Criminal Justice Act,” the head of Tehran’s Court of Revolution cleric Mousa Ghazanfarabadi told Fars news.

Earlier this year Ms Alinejad met with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who “thanked her for her bravery and continued dedication to the cause of freedom for Iranian women”.

In recent days the morality police in Iran has reacted to a number of incidents in which its vigilantees have been attacked in Tehran metro while “advising” women not to remove their hijab. She has denied working for any foreign governments.

Asked by the Fars news agency if sending video clips to an individual in US amounts to a criminal act, Mr Ghazanfarabadi has said: “My understanding of the law is that three types of video recordings are criminal acts; to film our military installations; to record private life of another citizen and the third case is to record a film with the aim of working with an enemy government”.

The revolution that swept through Iran 40 years ago ruptured all diplomatic ties between Iran and the United States. This we know all too well. But another bond, one between Iranian feminists and their American counterparts, was also ruptured, which, unlike the other, occurred in virtual anonymity.

In March 1979, days after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini rose to power, the American feminist icon Kate Millett traveled to Tehran. On March 8, Millett looped arms with fellow women demonstrators to protest against Khomeini’s proposal to reinstitute a mandatory dress code for women, the hijab. If there were a moment that could stand for a perfect microcosm of all that was right about Iran then—and for all that was about to go wrong—it was that moment in March. Veiled women, alongside unveiled women, were throwing their fists into the air, demanding gender equality.

When reporters asked the veiled women what they were protesting, since they themselves wore the veil, they unanimously said they objected to the eradication of choice. These women wanted the next generation to have more freedom than theirs did. A reporter asked Millett what she thought of Khomeini. She cast an unflinching look into the camera and said she believed Khomeini was a “male chauvinist.” These were the euphoric post-revolutionary days when most people revered the ayatollah; those who did not knew to keep silent. It was no surprise when Millett was subsequently arrested and expelled—an experience that she later recalled as the most terrifying of her life.

The Flame of Feminism Is Alive in Iran – International Women’s Day The Flame of Feminism Is Alive in Iran – International Women’s Day The Flame of Feminism Is Alive in Iran – International Women’s Day Arada a a a aa a a a a a a a a a a a a a

A severely disabled woman was just hours away from having a forced termination before the appeals court intervened

Courts in the United Kingdom have released the text of judicial decisions in the case of a disabled woman orginally ordered to undergo a forced late-term abortion.

The decisions, made available on July 11, reveal that the woman was hours away from being made to undergo the procedure at the time the Court of Appeals heard her case.

On June 21, Justice Nathalie Lieven from the Court of Protection had ruled that a 24-year-old woman, identified in court as AB, undergo an abortion at 22 weeks pregnant. Neither AB, nor her mother, “CD”, wished for her to have an abortion. Both CD and AB are devout Catholics, and are members of the Nigerian Igbo community.

The Court of Protection hears cases related to people who do not possess the capacity to make decisions for themselves. The Court of Appeal overturned Lieven’s decision just three days later, on June 24, finding that Lieven’s decision disregarded the assessment and wishes of AB’s mother and social worker, and went against her human rights.

“[Lieven]… was in error in failing to make any reference in her ultimate analysis to [the mother’s] views about AB’s best interests when, as the judge found, she knew AB better than anyone and had her best interests at heart,” reads the Court of Appeal’s judgment.

“[The mother and the social worker] each know AB better than the assessing psychiatrists could possibly do notwithstanding the lengthy, caring and careful assessments they had carried out. The judge had the expert evidence of the psychiatrists on the one hand and the views of those who know AB best on the other, but she did not weigh them up, the one against the other.”

Writing for the three judge panel, Lady Justice King concluded that Lieven “went beyond what the evidence could support” in concluding that the woman’s circumstances made a forced late-term abortion in her own best interests.

As tensions between Iran and the United States reached dangerous levels in recent weeks, Iranian human rights activists warned about the dire ramifications of sanctions and other pressures for women and the women’s rights movement in Iran.

The US policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran has been composed of ever-expanding sets of sanctions imposed in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal last year. The pressure has been intensified by a looming threat of imminent war. Not surprisingly, maximum pressure is having a big impact in Iran — but perhaps not the impact the United States claims to seek.

The worsening implications of US sanctions are reaching alarming levels, with women and the women’s rights movement in Iran among the collateral damage.

Indeed, Iranian women complain about the spiraling prices of imported contact lenses, cancer and diabetes drugs and even sanitary pads and tampons. They have had to resort to food rationing and substitution strategies to stretch a weak rial and feed their families as the reimposition of US extraterritorial sanctions batters the Iranian economy.

Washington maintains that sanctions do not apply to medicines and food. While technically true, in reality ordinary Iranians are seeing shortages of drugs, medical supplies and other essential goods as banking channels have been shut down and Iran faces limited access to foreign currency.

One 28-year-old mother from western Kermanshah province told Al-Monitor about her newborn baby, who was diagnosed with acid reflux in April. The doctor prescribed a Zantac (ranitidine) syrup. “We searched all the pharmacies in my hometown and then I called my friends in Tehran but the syrup was nowhere to be found,” said Nasrin, who asked that her last name not be used. Finally, she ordered the syrup, which is produced by British multinational GlaxoSmithKline, from Iraqi Kurdistan through family acquaintances. “We paid 120,000 tomans [$28.50] for the syrup, while the same syrup was available in the pharmacies in Iran for just 25,000 tomans [$5.95] before the [reimposition of US] sanctions.”

US officials have repeatedly stressed that they have legitimate concerns about the Iranian government’s behavior and that they need to take action. Yet so far women, children and ordinary Iranians who were not part of the Islamic Republic’s decisions seem to be those most directly suffering as the country’s economic decline is having broad social and public health impacts.

Oregon’s recent legislative mandate to provide free of charge a variety of sanitary products, including tampons, to incarcerated women and girls is both a victory and a shame.

It is a victory because now more incarcerated women and girls will have access to a basic necessity that supports personal hygiene and confidentiality.

It is a shame because a woman’s basic need for sanitary products has to be legislated and dependent upon the sympathetic nature of those with decision-making power. This is particularly disturbing given that the growth in the number of incarcerated women has outpaced the growth of incarcerated men in the United States.

The United States is known as one of the world’s leading incarcerator of women housing approximately, 219,000 women in some type of correctional facility whether federal prison, state prison or local jail.

Projected to cost $100,000 each year, the Oregon mandate applies to all correctional facilities in the state. Still, Oregon’s legislation will not benefit the entire body of eligible incarcerated women and girls across segments of the country without such a mandate. Other states that do not have such a mandate fail to recognize sanitary products just as essential as soap and toothpaste.

As nurses who have cared for women in hospitals and community settings, we know the consequences of poor hygiene — especially for menstruating women who are also subject to embarrassment when lacking the necessary hygienic protections during their menstrual cycles.

Women who defer to make-shift materials during this time are also at an increased risk for malodorous disorders along with a number of infectious conditions, including toxic shock syndrome, a potentially deadly condition resulting for an overgrowth of bacteria due to prolonged wearing of heavily soiled tampons.

The true cost of shame and humiliation associated with not having the proper supply of sanitary supplies in our correctional facilities is immeasurable for this population of women. It needs to be considered a violation of human rights.

Child, early and forced marriage, including in humanitarian settings

Child, early and forced marriage (CEFM) is a human rights violation and a harmful practice that disproportionately affects women and girls globally, preventing them from living their lives free from all forms of violence.

CEFM threatens the lives and futures of girls and women around the world, robbing them of their agency to make decisions about their lives, disrupting their education, making them more vulnerable to violence, discrimination and abuse, and preventing their full participation in economic, political and social spheres. Child marriage is also often accompanied by early and frequent pregnancy and childbirth, resulting in higher than average maternal morbidity and mortality rates. CEFM often result in women and girls attempting to flee their communities or to commit suicide to avoid or escape the marriage.

International human rights conventions and international entities stress the need to take measures to address CEFM. Over the last years, actions to end child, early and forced marriage have increased at international, regional and national levels (SeeA/HRC/RES/24/23; A/HRC/26/22; A/71/253). Specific efforts are undertaken to link these efforts to the implementation and monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly Goal 5.3 to eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilations.

Despite its prohibition by international law and many national legislations, the practice remains widespread. While the prevalence of child marriage is decreasing globally, with the proportion of women who were married as children decreased by 15 per cent in the last decade (from 1 in 4 to approximately 1 in 5), according to UNICEF. Yet, the prevalence rates of child marriage, early union, and adolescent pregnancy remain high, particularly in some regions. To end the practice globally, progress must be significantly accelerated and sustained.

In its resolution A/HRC/RES/29/8 (22 July 2015) the Human Rights Council requested the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to organize an expert workshop to review and discuss theimpact of existing strategies and initiatives to address child, early and forced marriage and prepare a report on the deliberations held during the workshop to be submitted to the Council at its thirty-fifth session, which took place on 21 and 22 October 2016 (report A/HRC/35/5).

The Handmaid’s Tale” costume is now the ultimate symbol of women’s rights

The Handmaid’s Tale” costume is now the ultimate symbol of women’s rights

The ongoing TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale has done much to remind us of the astonishing pertinence of Margaret Atwood’s novel—which was first published in 1985 and is soon to be followed by a sequel: The Testaments. In particular, it has brought the costume of the handmaids, carefully described by Atwood in the book, to the attention of a new generation of thinkers

In the novel, the red cloak and dress worn with a white bonnet, are together described as a modesty costume In Gilead the repressive American regime in which the main protagonist Offred is forced to live it is intended to function as a sign of female subservience Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner made up to $135 million while working for free But as the #resistsister hashtag chosen by production house Hulu to market the series suggests the modesty costume despite its intended function as a symbol of subservience has remarkable potency when removed from its Gileadean context and redeployed as a symbol of female agency and the defiance of oppression.

Amnesty International says more than 1 million people in over 200 countries and territories across the world have signed a petition calling on the Iranian authorities to release prominent human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh.

She has been sentenced to a total of 38 1/2 years in prison and 148 lashes following what the London-based human rights watchdog called “two grossly unfair trials.”

To mark one year since her arrest, Amnesty International says it is organizing on June 13 a handover of the signatures collected to Iranian embassies around the globe.

Sotoudeh’s detention “has exposed the depths of the Iranian authorities’ repression on an international stage,” Philip Luther, the group’s research and advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement.

“Today we are sending them a clear message: the world is watching and our campaign will continue until Nasrin Sotoudeh is free,” Luther added.

Sotoudeh, the co-winner of the European Parliament’s 2012 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, was arrested at her home in Tehran on June 13 last year.

The human rights lawyer and women’s rights defender was sentenced in March to 33 1/2 years in prison and 148 lashes.

In September 2016, Sotoudeh had been sentenced in her absence to five years in prison in a separate case.

Taking both cases together, the total prison sentence against the lawyer is 38 1/2 years. Under Iran’s sentencing guidelines, she is due to serve 17 years in prison.

Sotoudeh’s case is “emblematic of a wider crackdown by the Iranian authorities in the last few years to quash Iran’s civil society and silence those advocating for human rights” in the country, according to Amnesty International.

Sotoudeh last year represented several of the women detained for removing their head scarves in public to protest against the country’s Islamic dress code.

An outspoken critic of the Iranian establishment, she previously spent three years in prison after representing dissidents arrested during mass protests in 2009 against the disputed reelection of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

LGBTQ rights, women’s health at center stage in 2020 race

LGBTQ rights, women’s health at center stage in 2020 race

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke unveiled a plan to protect LGBTQ rights on the morning he led a Pride Run through a New York City park

The former Texas congressman promises to use executive orders to overturn the Trump administration’s transgender troop ban and reverse the practice of discharging HIV-positive service members Recommended Video O’Rourke wants to work with Congress to pass the Equality Act, which he says would ensure that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people can “fully participate in public life without discrimination” in employment, housing and “public spaces and services The plan released Wednesday includes a universal health care system that would guarantee LGBTQ people access to hormone “and other gender-affirming treatments O’Rourke also pledges to make it easier for LGBTQ refugee seeking U.S. asylum Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood is calling on the Democratic candidates to confront another contentious issue The organization is set to host a forum on reproductive rights for the Democratic primary field this month, as the issue of abortion emerges as a central topic in the 2020 presidential race The forum, hosted by the organization’s political arm, is the first event in recent presidential campaigns singularly focused on women’s health. The candidates will be individually questioned for 15 minutes about their positions and records on issues like abortion rights, access to health care and contraception.